Crewe in Focus: Fire Safety and Compliance
Crewe is a railway town built around engineering and, for the past century and more, manufacturing. It sits at the centre of a major rail junction — five lines converge here — and its economy has always reflected that: heavy industry, precision manufacturing, logistics, and the trades and services that support them. Bentley Motors, headquartered on Pyms Lane, is the town's largest private employer and operates a manufacturing campus that is one of the most complex multi-occupier industrial environments in Cheshire East. Leighton Hospital, to the west of the town on Middlewich Road, is a major acute hospital operated by Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and one of the most significant multi-hazard buildings in the county. The town centre is a compact mix of retail, hospitality and civic buildings, with a significant private rented sector in the streets immediately around the station and the town centre that includes a substantial HMO stock. Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service is the enforcing authority for the FSO in Crewe and across Cheshire East, with Crewe fire station — a wholetime station on Crewe Road — as the primary response unit.
For those who own, manage or occupy non-domestic premises in Crewe, the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 places a direct legal duty to carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment and keep it under review. If you manage premises in Crewe and need to commission or review that assessment, our fire risk assessments in Crewe page sets out how we work. The incident described below is one of the largest fire events in Crewe in recent years, and its full circumstances — including the criminal outcome — make it one of the most thoroughly documented arson cases involving a vacant commercial building anywhere in the North West.
The Former Communisis Printworks Fire, Catherine Street — August 2024
At around 4.15pm on Friday 9 August 2024, Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service were called to reports of a fire at a disused building at the junction of Catherine Street and Frances Street in Crewe town centre. The building was the former Communisis printworks, a large industrial premises measuring approximately 70 metres by 90 metres that had been vacant since January 2024, when the printing company that had last occupied it fell into administration. The site had a history stretching back well over a century, having housed, at various points, the Crewe Stationery Company, McCorquodale Printers and the northern edition of the Daily Express. Plans for demolition had been submitted to Cheshire East Council in June 2024. In the same month, Cheshire Police had discovered the building had been used as a large-scale cannabis farm, with well over 2,000 plants found inside.
The fire was reported to have started at around 4.15pm. It took hold rapidly in the derelict structure and a major incident was declared as the blaze developed in a way that threatened the densely packed terraced streets surrounding the site. At peak attendance, fifteen fire engines were on scene, alongside specialist appliances including a high-reach extending turret from Macclesfield, an aerial ladder platform from Lymm, a high-volume pump and a water bowser. Roads across the surrounding area were closed and five streets — including Catherine Street and Frances Street themselves — were subject to a full evacuation, with hundreds of residents directed to Crewe Alexandra FC and the Crewe Lifestyle Centre as emergency rest centres. Some properties in the surrounding streets suffered structural damage from the fire. Firefighters remained at the scene for several days before the last hotspots were brought under control. No footage of the incident was released by the fire service, though the incident received national coverage from Sky News and other broadcasters at the time.
Two men — James Evans, aged 19, and Justin Keeling, aged 18, both from the Crewe area — entered the building and ignited a large pile of cardboard inside. Both subsequently pleaded guilty at Chester Crown Court: Evans to arson with recklessness as to whether life was endangered, and Keeling to the same offence together with perverting the course of justice, having fabricated a false sighting of other suspects to deceive police. At sentencing on 21 May 2025, Evans received 56 months in prison and Keeling received 52 months plus a further 238 days consecutive for the perverting offence.
The Communisis printworks fire is the most thoroughly documented opportunistic arson at a vacant commercial building in this part of Cheshire in recent memory, and the detail that emerged during the criminal proceedings makes it possible to trace exactly how an accessible, combustible, unmonitored building becomes a catastrophic fire in a matter of minutes. Two people entered through a point of inadequate perimeter control, found a substantial pile of cardboard — a fuel load that should not have been accessible — and ignited it. The fire took hold in a building with no active fire detection and spread through the derelict structure before any alarm reached the surrounding community. By the time the alarm was raised, the fire had already developed beyond the capacity of the building's own structure to contain it, and the response required fifteen fire engines, specialist appliances from across Cheshire, and the mobilisation of council emergency services for what became a multi-day operation.
For responsible persons managing vacant or transitional commercial premises in Crewe and across Cheshire East, several specific actions follow from this. A fire risk assessment for a vacant building must specifically address the arson risk, treating deliberate ignition as a foreseeable rather than a remote scenario. The assessment should address perimeter security and access control — whether a determined but unsophisticated entrant can access the building without leaving visible evidence — and it should address the removal of combustible material from all accessible areas, since leaving waste, packaging and raw materials inside a vacant building is providing the fuel for exactly this type of incident. The assessment should address detection: a vacant building with no occupants to raise an alarm relies entirely on an automated detection system to notify the fire service, and a detection system that is no longer connected or maintained provides no protection at all. Where a building is vacant pending demolition — as the Communisis building was — the demolition timetable itself may affect the risk assessment, since a building that was due to come down in July 2024 and was still standing in August 2024 had accumulated several additional weeks of vacancy risk that were not anticipated in any original assessment. We have written about this fire and its implications at greater length in our standalone article on the Crewe printworks case, which is available on our fire safety advice pages.
The Beechmere Retirement Village Fire: A Note for the Care and Sheltered Housing Sector
On 8 August 2019, the Beechmere Retirement Village on Rolls Avenue in Crewe was destroyed by fire. The complex housed approximately 150 residents, all of whom had to be evacuated. The fire was described by CFRS as one of the largest ever attended by the service, with over 70 firefighters deployed at its height. No residents were killed or seriously injured, but the impact on displaced elderly residents was, by all accounts, profound and lasting.
Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service subsequently brought prosecutions against six companies for alleged failures to comply with the FSO, covering the design, risk assessment, management and maintenance of the complex. After a complex multi-year legal process, the prosecution was withdrawn on 7 May 2025 — two days into the trial at Chester Crown Court — after extensive legal submissions made it clear there was no realistic prospect of securing convictions. Not-guilty verdicts were returned for all four remaining defendants.
The Beechmere case is significant for responsible persons at care homes, retirement villages and sheltered housing schemes across Crewe and Cheshire East for two reasons that have nothing to do with the legal outcome. The first is the specific vulnerability of the resident profile: older people with limited mobility, some of whom may need assistance to evacuate, require a fire safety strategy — detection, alarm, compartmentation, evacuation — that is calibrated to their specific needs, and particularly to the time it takes to evacuate occupants who cannot self-evacuate. The fire risk assessment for any care or retirement premises must address the means by which every resident can be evacuated within a safe time, including those who need staff assistance, those who may be confused or distressed, and those with equipment that complicates evacuation. Where personal evacuation plans — PEEPs — are needed, those should be identified and the procedures around them documented. Evacuation chair training for relevant staff is a key element of a complete provision. The second point is about the chain of responsibility. The Beechmere complex involved a developer, an operator, a facilities management contractor, and a fire risk assessor — each with distinct and documented roles. The prosecution sought to allocate liability across that chain. The lesson for any responsible person in a care or sheltered housing context is that the FSO duty to carry out a suitable and sufficient fire risk assessment, and to implement and maintain the measures identified in it, cannot be fully discharged by appointing a contractor to carry out specific elements of that work. The responsible person retains the duty, and the obligation to ensure that the contractors acting on their behalf are competent, that their work is reviewed, and that the fire safety arrangements across the premises remain adequate as the building, its occupants, and its management change over time. Our care home fire safety service covers these obligations in the specific context of care and residential healthcare premises.
Fire Safety Duties for Responsible Persons Across Crewe
Crewe's economic profile creates specific fire safety obligations across several sectors that are worth addressing directly.
Bentley Motors and precision manufacturing. The Bentley campus on Pyms Lane is a major complex employer with a combination of design, engineering, assembly and testing operations across a large footprint. Manufacturing premises of this type carry a fire risk profile that includes paint shops, composite materials, solvent-based processes, precision engineering facilities and significant vehicle storage, alongside office accommodation, showrooms and visitor facilities. The FSO assessment for premises of this complexity must address the interaction between different process activities and the general fire precautions, and must be consistent with any DSEAR obligations arising from flammable substances used in the manufacturing process. Responsible persons at tier-one and tier-two suppliers to the Bentley supply chain across Crewe and South Cheshire carry equivalent obligations for their own premises.
Leighton Hospital and the healthcare estate. Leighton Hospital is a major acute NHS facility with a complex multi-occupier structure, non-ambulant patients, 24-hour operations, and high-dependency clinical areas where evacuation is fundamentally different from standard commercial premises. Fire safety training for clinical staff — including horizontal progressive evacuation and the RACE procedure — is a legal requirement under Article 21 of the FSO and must be evidenced in staff training records. Healthcare Technical Memoranda define specific standards for fire detection, compartmentation, and escape in NHS buildings, and these interact with the general FSO obligations in ways that require specialist knowledge of both frameworks.
Retail and hospitality in the town centre. Crewe town centre's retail and food and drink offer, centred on the Market Centre, Queens Square and the wider pedestrianised core, generates significant public occupancy in buildings that range from Victorian commercial properties to modern retail units. Responsible persons at premises accessible to the public must ensure that evacuation plans account for peak occupancy, that all staff have received specific fire safety training, and that a documented fire safety policy is in place for employers with five or more employees.
HMOs and the station quarter. The streets immediately around Crewe railway station and the town centre — including areas along Nantwich Road, Edleston Road and the surrounding residential streets — contain a significant concentration of HMO properties. Crewe's rail connections make it an attractive base for workers and students, and the HMO stock reflects that. Where properties are let to three or more unrelated persons sharing facilities, the mandatory HMO licensing requirements apply, and the fire safety conditions imposed by Cheshire East Council as part of that licence must be met. Our HMO fire safety service covers those requirements, including the interaction between the licensing conditions and the FSO. Fire door inspections are particularly important in converted Victorian terraces, where original doors may have been retained or informally replaced and where the compartmentation between the kitchen and the staircase is typically the only passive protection available to upper-floor occupants.
Vacant and transitional commercial buildings. The pattern documented by both the printworks fire and, before it, the history of the Beechmere site indicates that Crewe has, in common with many towns of its size and profile, a stock of vacant, transitional and derelict commercial buildings where the arson risk is significantly elevated and the consequences of a major fire fall not only on the building owner but on the residential and commercial community around them. Responsible persons for any vacant commercial premises in Crewe should review their fire safety arrangements specifically for the vacancy risk, ensure that perimeter security, waste removal, detection and insurance conditions are all current, and consider commissioning a specific vacancy risk assessment.
Fire Safety Support for Crewe and Cheshire East
Fletcher Risk Management provides fire risk assessments in Crewe and across Cheshire East as a regular part of our practice, covering manufacturing, healthcare, care homes, HMOs, retail and hospitality, and vacant and transitional commercial premises. We cover the full range of complementary services: fire door inspections, fire safety training, evacuation plans, fire safety policies and evacuation chair training. For care home and retirement accommodation, our care home fire safety service addresses the specific obligations that apply to premises with non-ambulant residents.
Fire safety support across the North West and North Wales
Fletcher Risk Management provides fire risk assessments, fire door inspections and fire safety training for responsible persons across Chester, Cheshire, the Wirral, Merseyside, Greater Manchester, North Wales and beyond. To discuss your requirements, please get in touch.
This article is intended for general guidance only and does not constitute legal advice. Responsible persons should seek professional advice tailored to their specific premises and circumstances. Fletcher Risk Management Ltd provides fire risk assessments, fire door inspections, and fire safety training across the North West and North Wales. Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service is the enforcing authority for the FSO in Crewe and Cheshire East.